


One Little Thing

by Gyhl



Category: Kingsman (Movies)
Genre: Community: fandomweekly, Gen, Merlin lived, prompt: second chances
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-10
Updated: 2019-01-10
Packaged: 2019-10-07 14:26:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 954
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17367548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gyhl/pseuds/Gyhl
Summary: Harry had regrets in his life, things that could have been avoided by the smallest of actions.But what if he could change one?





	One Little Thing

As one grew older, one invariably thought about their regrets. Harry had… well, quite a few. There’d been the entire business at the church. He still dreamed about that. In those dreams, it was quite the literal bloodbath, with everything and everyone swallowed by the rising, deep red tide of it all. It ought to be comical, really, but dear God, it wasn’t.

And of course, there was Lee. Fuck, he’d never stopped regretting that day. He’d missed one thing. One little fucking thing. Granted, that ‘little thing’ had been a grenade, one that Lee had thrown himself on top of without so much as a thought for himself. Lee had died so that he, and Merlin, and James could live.

How had he repaid that sacrifice? With the offer of a favor to his widow and son. Who he then put out of his mind and left to fend for themselves. Who then fell into the care of one Dean Anthony Baker. And that son had learned to get between his mother and stepfather, to keep her safe from his anger. He’d learned it so well that he’d warned Harry off once, to quietly take a beating from Dean’s so-called dogs.

And then he’d sent the boy down the same path that had gotten Lee killed, nearly getting _him_ killed in the process. That was another dream he had far too often. A dream of being back in the jungle, of hearing the _click_ as Eggsy stepped on the mine. Only, in the dream, they’d had to leave him there. There had only been one of those fucking bomb-proof suits on the jet, and Merlin had been the one to take it. They’d insisted, because he wasn’t a field agent and they were. In reality, Merlin had used a freezing spray to get Eggsy off of it and take his place. His repayment for Lee’s sacrifice all those years ago.

They’d found him after, a fucking tourniquet around each of the stumps that had once been his legs. He and Eggsy had thanked everything under the stars for the alpha gel, as they each applied a pack to keep Merlin alive until they could get him back to Statesman. But that was never how the dream went. In the dream, they found the pieces of Eggsy’s corpse. Sometimes Lee’s body was there, too. Sometimes, it was just Eggsy, but in his father’s gear and the same pose Lee had died in.

It was a wonder he didn’t wake up screaming at times.

He knew the feel of those dreams, the texture of them. They were things where the colors were too bright, the smells muted. Except for the blood. That was all the world of his nightmares ever smelled of.

Certainly, it never smelled of the desert, of sweat, of fire and smoke from the bombs. There was never the feeling of grit on his face, or the weight of his gear. And he had never breathed in those nightmares. It was a thing that simply… wasn’t part of it. And God, he could taste the sand and smoke in those breaths. James, who had been a proposal at the time and not yet one of them, had always been absent in the nightmares. Always. And yet, there he was.

“Galahad.” Merlin’s voice, reminding him they were there to do a job. Reminding him that he’d stopped mid-sentence in the interrogation.

This was real. Somehow it was 19 December 1997 again. Somehow he’d been given another chance at this. What were the implications of that? If he changed this one moment in time - if this was actually real - what else would that change? What else could he prevent? How many agents could he keep alive because of this? And, for that matter, should he change things?

Movement from their prisoner forced him away from his thoughts, forced him to act. Because he knew the man was leaning down to pull the key from the grenade. It would only be seconds before he would have it and grin up at them with it in his teeth. It would only be seconds before Lee would end his short life by throwing himself on that grenade.

Harry reacted almost without thought, without caring about the consequences of this one, simple action. His sidearm was in his hand almost instantly - fuck, he’d forgotten how much better his reflexes had been twenty years ago - and he shot the prisoner twice, once in the head and once in the heart.

“And you did that because…?”

Harry looked over at Merlin and then went to the prisoner. He pulled the grenade from where it had been hidden. He held it up, letting his old friend and their proposals see what they had all missed. And then he waited, waited for the dream to end. Or for some other proof that this wasn’t real. But that didn’t happen and Harry realized Merlin had said something. 

“Beg pardon?”

“I said, we’re going to need yet another test.”

“Yes,” Harry agreed, somewhat numbly. 

He reached out and put a hand on Lee’s shoulder. It was as much to guide his proposal out of the room as it was to reassure himself that this was actually happening. Lee turned as Harry guided him, and Harry wondered how much his feelings were showing at the moment.

“I’m sorry, sir,” Lee said once they were out of earshot of the other two. “I missed that.”

“We all missed it,” Harry said with a shake of his head. “And Lee?”

“Yes, sir?”

“I'd like it if you called me Harry.” He smiled. “Whatever happens with the job, I think you and I are going to be friends.”


End file.
